BASEBALL

BASEBALL; Pitch Floats Like a Butterfly, Stings Like a Bee

By JACK CURRY

Published: August 31, 1992

It floats and flutters. It dips and darts. It makes catchers cringe, it makes hitters grumble and it makes even confident managers pace the dugout.

What is it? A balloon dropping off the upper deck in the bottom of the ninth inning? An annoying team mascot interrupting play while Jose Canseco is batting with the bases loaded?

Of course not. Any of those vexations would be bearable compared to this baseball oddity. The floating, fluttering, hitter-harassing, catcher-cursing pitch being described is the knuckleball.

"I never got real excited about catching it," said Mike Stanley of the Yankees. "And I never get too excited about hitting it."

You remember the knuckleball. Think back now. There was Emil (Dutch) Leonard, one of the first pitchers to knuckle under in the 1930's. There was Hoyt Wilhelm, who pitched until he was 49, pitched in more games than anyone else and probably threw more knuckleballs than anyone else. There was Wilbur Wood, who had four straight 20-victory seasons, and then there were Phil and Joe Niekro, the brothers who learned the pitch from their father in a Lansing, Ohio, backyard and perfected it into 538 triumphs. They could all throw knucklers that turned .330 hitters into frustrated sitters. And Wakefield Makes Three

Wait, you haven't seen any knuckleballs lately? Well, 44-year-old Charlie Hough is still throwing one for the Chicago White Sox. Tom Candiotti, 35, is tossing one at his fourth major league address, this time in Los Angeles. And the new knuckleball pitcher on a very small block is a 26-year-old rookie, Tim Wakefield, who has kept the Pirates gliding toward another pennant with his wacky pitch, leading him to a 4-1 record and 2.02 earned run average.

The emergence of Wakefield, his ease on the mound and the little strain the knuckleball causes on the arm has drawn new attention to the forgotten pitch and resurrected a question that has been asked for decades: How come there are not more knuckleballers?

"The knuckleball is the last thing teams look for," said Phil Niekro. "I don't know why, but there doesn't seem to be much interest in it."

Candiotti, who is 9-11 despite his nifty 3.10 e.r.a., offers a reason why. "With the scouting system the way it is nowadays, you have to throw the ball pretty much at 90 miles an hour to get signed," Candiotti said. "So you've got to change the scouting system and get them out there looking for more guys who can be knuckleball pitchers."

Just look at Wakefield's twisted path to the big leagues. He hit .189 at Class A Watertown in 1988, and a teammate told Manager Woody Huyke that the light-hitting first baseman could throw a knuckleball. Four years later, he is one of only three major leaguers throwing the pitch and also wondering about the fuss it has spawned.

"It's just one stupid pitch," Wakefield said. "People make such a big deal out of it."

Said Pittsburgh Manager Jim Leyland: "They have him in the Hall of Fame already, and that's ridiculous." A Rare Matchup

All three knuckleball pitchers wear No. 49 (Wilhelm's number) so that should make them easy to trace. Candiotti and Wakefield even pitched in the same game Wednesday, and it was a memorable day for knuckleballers as both were superb before the Pirates emerged with a 2-0 victory. Wakefield tossed a complete-game six-hitter and Candiotti surrendered nine hits in the first matchup between knuckleballers in the National League since Joe Niekro and the Astros beat Phil Niekro and the Braves, 5-3, on Sept. 13, 1982.

"When you have a good game, it looks like the easiest pitch to throw and it makes the other hitters look so bad," Candiotti said. "But when you have a bad game, you know why there are not more knuckleball pitchers."

Only three out of almost 300 pitchers in the majors earn their salary tossing the knuckler, a pitch batters know is coming and still have trouble hitting. But if it frustrates hitters, why does the list of knuckleballers remain tiny?

"It's hard to do," said Hough, whose 6-10 record is deceiving as his e.r.a. is 3.76. "It's probably even harder to get a chance to do it." No Time to Experiment

The White Sox and Yankees have tried developing knuckleballers in the minors without success, but few teams have followed that route because the pitch is extremely difficult to throw for strikes.

"You normally don't see more than three or four throwing it at one time in the big leagues," Niekro said. "Hopefully, there will always be someone around throwing it."

To which Hough added: "There is no time to experiment with it. Now, you got to be quick."

Hough had to be quick to carve out a career for himself, and he never would have made it to the major leagues without the knuckleball. Back in 1969, Hough injured his shoulder and started tinkering with the knuckler. After only 10 minutes of placing his middle and index fingers above a circular seam on the baseball, bending them slightly and keeping his wrist stiff as he threw the ball, Hough said he knew he could master the pitch.

Beaming over the discovery, he found Tommy Lasorda, his minor league manager at Spokane, Wash., and relayed the news.

"I can throw a knuckleball," Hough announced. "And from now on, that is what I'm going to do."

"Good," Lasorda said. "Because if you didn't do something, you were going to get released."

With his new pitch, Hough went from being almost unemployed to being on the Dodgers in 1970 with the bases loaded and Willie Stargell batting in the ninth inning of a one-run game. Hough threw a knuckler, and another and another. Finally, the count was 3-2 and he threw two knucklers that Stargell fouled. Then Hough slipped a fastball by him, ending the game and completing an auspicious debut.

"Last fastball I ever threw to him," said Hough, who has 201 victories in the midst of his 20th season.

Wakefield probably has trouble remembering the last fastball he threw. In one game this season, 102 of his 105 pitches were knucklers.

"Everybody talks about the way it moves," Wakefield said. "I hear that all the time. I guess it's a really nasty pitch."

Nasty is an apt description. Though Niekro and Hough claimed they did not know exactly why a knuckleball does what it does, they might have been playing possum. They knew they never altered their grip on the ball, but they changed the speed and release point of the pitch to create various knucklers and further confound hitters.

Professor Robert Adair of Yale University, a physicist who wrote, "The Physics of Baseball," explained why a knuckleball can dance like Michael Jackson.

"The knuckleball is thrown so that the stitches on one side catch the air," Adair said. "It is smooth on the other side and that gives an imbalance. The disruption of the air gives you less air resistance and the ball moves in that direction."

A translation?

"It's a tough pitch to hit," Adair concluded.

Photo: Tim Wakefield of the Pirates has a fondness for the knuckler. (Associated Press) Diagram: "The Knuckleball Hop" illustrates how to throw a knuckleball. (Sources: Peter J. Brancazio, Brooklyn College Department of Physics; "Sport Science" (Brancazio); "Newton at the Batt," Eric W. Schrier and William F. Allman)